assessment

On 03 January I sent the following message and indicated I would summarize
the repsonses. Below are the only four I received. I would have to admit
that I am disappointed that there were so few responses, but on the other
hand they are quality repsonses!. I had imagined there was a real hotbed of
assessment activity taking place out there that I just did not know about.
Apparently not
jim
ORIGINAL MESSAGE
Plant-eders:
I'm about to teach General Botany for (mostly) freshmen students, and I
wonder if any of you would like to share techniques of assessment that you
have found particularly good. Taking cues from Angelo and Cross, in the past
I have done "one minute papers" at the end of class, and have also asked for
questions/comments from the students via email. Last year I did a pretest
consisting of 50 multiple choice questions (I told them I wanted to know
what they already knew, which was predictably not much; I gave them 5 points
for simply filling it out on the honor system (good success); I did not
return the pretest to them) and then I gave the same questions as a posttest
as part of the comprehensive final exam. The improvement was gratifying, but
N was small (18).
When I was a department chair at another institution, we tried a pretest
with am intro bio class of about 400, with a multiple choice exam of, as I
recall, 100 questions. There were some students who would not play the game
and left after they had literally only written their names on the scan sheet
because it was required for the course. Obviously a real flop.
As a most time administrator and little time (now) classroom facilitator, I
feel and make felt the pressure by our acrediting agency to undertake
assessment and for the most part believe it to have value. But quite
honestly, I'm not sure that what I do to try to set an example ("Lead") is
the most effective. I also find myself now much more interested in my
students learning than my teaching.
Any comments or suggestions you have would be appreciated. I imagine you and
your universities/departments are being asked/required to do other than
typical exams for assessment, and know how many good ideas have pasted my
eyes since I signed on to plant-ed a couple of years ago. I will summarize
the comments and post them after a couple weeks time for all to see. Please
be sure the word "Assessment" is in the subject line.
RESPONSES
From: "Scott T. Meissner" <smeissne at prairienet.org>
Our college is also going through "assessment shock"
and I have used the one minute papers as well. What I also do is
have students go to the blackboard, mostly in laboratory, and
practice drawing out the relationships and structures that we are
covering. For instance, I give out various descriptive paragraphs
of flower structures and challange the students to draw a
cross section and longitudinal section of the flower on the
board. This lets me know if they have learnt their flower parts,
and the terminology, and then I can give them one-on-one help with
any problems they are having.
The purpose, as I understand it, of assessment is for the
professor to do more than a stand up lecture and give a final. More
in terms of actually interacting with the students where the professor
is dealing with the students on problems they are having. It is not
meant to be collecting a set of paper to document an activity to a
beaurocrat. A question and answer session can be one means of
assessment. It tells you where your students are in comprehending the
material, and you can use this information to modify your teaching.
If your students have a concept down pat, why review it again. But
if they still do not get heterospory you can go over it again. The
idea is to bring some sort of feedback to the students that addresses
their questions. One minute papers are one way of doing this, but
not the only one.
As long as you are in touch with your students and dealing
with their questions you are doing assessment. The process is just
one of being aware of how you are keeping in touch, and trying a
variety of means to build these links since different students
may use different means for communicating.
From: LERICKSO at CROP.UOGUELPH.CA (Larry Erickson)
I, too, have started emphasizing "learning" rather than
"teaching" in my pedagogical discussions, teaching dossiers etc. I
have found the emphasis on teaaching a somewhat faculty-centred and
top-down perspective, rather than a student-centred approach on what
actually is learned. It also fits better with my role as a
researcher, wherein I perceive myself as a learner, which helps to
keep me in a student-like mode, as well. I've become a little tired
of the constant emphasis on "teaching", and believe many of my
colleagues have become a little cynical of the motives for this,
especially when those who are always emphasizing teaching are also
critical of the recognition given to research and their research is
distinctly miniscule.
From: Gary Hannan <bio_hannan at EMUVAX.EMICH.EDU>
We are in the process of evaluating a cognitive structure (or concept
mapping) approach to assessment. Students are asked to complete a diagram
that represents relationships among topics covered in either individual
courses or for the core curriculum, depending on what we want to target.
We have found that it is possible to construct such diagrmas and administer
them in a pre and post strategy for individual courses. Structures for
some courses show significant, although weak (r2=.2 to .4) correlation with
student grade (admittedly just one alternative way of assessing students
also). We are still working on evaluating the utility of this approach on
a core curriculum basis. If you check with educational psychologists you
can get lots of info about concept mapping.
From: ssinger at carleton.edu (Susan Singer)
Here's a sample of what I do the first day of class. (It might be
formatted more clearly on my web page for this
http://www.carleton.edu:81/curricular/BIOL/classes/bio120/syll.html). I
think it works because unless they tell me they don't understand this stuff
I say I will assume they do in my lectures. Usually the majority are
baffled by mitosis and meiosis and say so without me giving them a problem
to solve.
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Please circle concepts you are not familiar with. Remember, we are assuming
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1) Cell theory - Cells are the basic unit of organization in living things
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